January 20, 2016

New Lotto Game Starts Sunday In Iowa: Lucky for Life!

A new lotto game debuts this weekend here in Iowa, and it comes with a twist on big lotto prizes.

Iowa sales in the Lucky for Life® game begin Sunday. It offers 10 ways to win, including a top prize of $1,000 a day for life, and a second prize of $25,000 a year for life.

Iowa will be the 18th state to offer the Lucky for Life game, which got its start in Connecticut in 2009 before becoming a New England-wide game three years later and adding even more lotteries in the past year.

We’ve been looking for some time at game ideas that would complement Powerball® and our other lotto games and bring a different look and feel to that product category. We think Lucky for Life will be a great fit in our line-up of games.

Lucky for Life is a $2 game with drawings twice a week, at 9:38 p.m. on Mondays and Thursdays. Players choose five numbers from a pool of 48 for the white balls and 1 out of 18 numbers for the Lucky Ball. You can win the game’s top prize of $1,000 a day for life by matching all six winning numbers selected in one of it drawings. The game’s second prize – for matching the first five numbers but missing the Lucky Ball – is $25,000 a year for life. Other prize levels in the game range from $4 up to $5,000.

The game’s top two prize levels are described as “lasting as long as you do,” meaning that they’re truly for life. The minimum guaranteed payout for those two prizes is 20 years, and there is a lump-sum option for players who want that rather than lifetime annuity payments.

The odds of winning Lucky for Life’s top prize are about 1 in 30.8 million. That compares to odds of about 1 in 292.2 million of winning the Powerball jackpot; and odds of about 1 in 259 million of winning the Mega Millions® jackpot.

Regarding Jackpots being won for this game- I looked on the Lucky For Life Multi-state website, and could not even find when the last time a jackpot was won. It looks like there has been three $25,000 for life winners since last August, but that's it.

Hi, Barb. Thank you for reaching out to us about that! You are correct that Iowa was part of the Monopoly Millionaires Club lotto game when it was for sale in 2014, but chose not to continue with the scratch game that followed. I will pass your comment along to those here at the lottery who plan out our games.

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As the lottery’s vice president of external relations, I’m a member of the senior management team at the Iowa Lottery, where I’ve worked since 1999. I’ve spent my years at the lottery learning as much as I can about all the ins and outs of the lottery industry. I’ll put that knowledge to work here so I can share the behind-the-scenes details with you!